Archives

Some mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. (Phillips)

Coyotes stuck in a trap have been known to gnaw their foot off to escape. A lot of these three footed coyotes survive for years and do very well. Okay, they do well compared to coyotes that were killed by the trapper.

Are you really going to stay in that job until you retire no matter how you are treated?

If the company starts losing money is the president going to fire himself, or fire YOU?

Do you have to shoot your boss to get a promotion?

Don’t leave just because you can. If your job is fulfilling, pays well and gives you a chance to progress to where YOU want to go in your career, STAY. If you have a history of job skipping, stay awhile even if you don’t like it there. There are good reasons to stay in your current job. Fear is not a good reason.

Yesterday I wrote about non competes. If you are concerned about yours, talk to a lawyer who specializes in employment law. Many non competes are not enforceable. That means they are legally unfair or immoral. You are not morally obligated to do something immoral. It does not make sense to feel obligated to do what it is not legal to expect of you.

If you have a valid non compete, consider doing whatever you have to do to get out of it. One good way is to go to your boss and say, “I want a new contract with a more limited non compete.” Don’t threaten to quit, just ask him to reasonably limit the non compete. If he says, “No,” you can always start looking for a job. If he fires you for asking, check with your lawyer. He may have just voided the non compete. And last of all, he may realize you are upset and give you a raise or a promotion.

Even if you have to quit and commute 3 hours a day, it is better to quit now rather than later. Do you really think that in 3 years or 10 years you will have LESS obligations and lower expenses than you do now? Slavery is illegal. Don’t allow yourself to be a slave.

Don’t let fear paralyze you. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Carpe jugulum. Grab the day by the throat and make life give you what you deserve. You CAN change your life.

Something To Do Today

Like your job? Tell your boss.

Want to leave? Figure out how. Don’t be chained to a life of low expectations.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straightforward and simple integrity in another. (Colton)

Non-competes

For a year Jim did a two hour commute-one way, every day. What a horrible thought. He did it to get out of a non-compete agreement. Do you think he will ever sign another one?

Lawyers in Pennsylvania are expressly prohibited by law from having non-competes for lawyers. It is unfair, they say, to do that to lawyers and their clients. A lawyer leaving a law firm SHOULD be allowed to steal clients. So why do non-competes apply to everyone else? Because lawyers are paid to write them.

There are reasons to sign a broadly applicable non-compete agreement:

You will be trained from total ignorance to blinding expertise and will be paid lavishly with a guarantee of 1 year of pay after you are fired or quit.

Not a long list. Is it?

Here’s a list reasons to sign a limited non-compete agreement:

You will learn crucial trade secrets

You might steal customers or employees

You will receive some training and the costs need to be repaid

A simple non-compete clause is the most dangerous. You can be barred from every job in an industry or area if your contract only says, “You will not compete.” Make sure any contract you sign clearly states what specific things you are not allowed to do. It should list:

A reasonable period of time that you cannot compete (never more than a year)

A precise group you are not allowed to work for or call on

Specific jobs you cannot do for someone else

A geographic area it applies to (within 35 or 50 miles of where you worked)

If you don’t like a contract, change it. Cross out sections and write in the margins. Initial the changes. Handwritten changes on a contract take precedence over the typeset text.

Take control. You want a job, not a prison. You need freedom to take another job in order to make this one worthwhile. Have the guts to change a contract that is too restrictive. You’ll be surprised how often your changes are accepted. If they are not accepted, leave. Value your freedom.

Something To Do Today

Time to gossip. Ask people you know or strangers you meet at bars or the gym about non-compete agreements. Get them to tell you horror stories they have heard of. You will be appalled. It is an education you need.

Your resume has to be good enough in a blind test to get past the trash can.

Getting past the trash can

When is your resume being thrown away? In my last post I gave the 4 major trashing points in your resume’s life.

You have two ways to break through the cycle:

Have someone give your resume directly to the boss with their recommendation.

Have a resume that passes all 4 trash points.

Networking will get your resume directly to the boss with a recommendation. Outstanding networking will get you an interview without a resume.

For the rest:

Do you pass the idiot test and the expert test? Assume an idiot and an expert will each try to find a reason to throw away your resume. Assume they have too many resumes and want to throw away as many as possible. They are proactive trashers.

Pass the idiot test

The secretary has to see an obvious, undeniable fit with the job description. She won’t understand all the acronyms, but she knows they have to be there. She knows how much experience is required. She knows it has to be a manager or a worker. She trashes resumes that don’t shout that they fit the job.

Pass the expert test

The boss has a lot to do. He wants a great person to work for him, but doesn’t have enough time to talk to everyone. Like the secretary he throws out the obvious problems. The difference is that he understands the resume. He also throws out the resumes that just don’t feel right. Time is critical to him. The first person he calls has the accomplishments he needs in his company.

How you can test both ways

Run a test. Take your resume and the job ad you are responding to. Hand both to someone who doesn’t know the field. Do they think you pass? Do the same with an expert. Do you pass?

Hoping is not a plan

Stop wishing and hoping. Either network your way in or find your own screeners. You need other people to help you get your resume out of the trash can.

Something To Do Today

Who do you know that is up front and brutally blunt? Take your resume and the job ad you are responding to. Ask them read the job ad thoroughly. Then give them your resume. Ask them to decide in 10 seconds if it looks like the resume passes. Then ask them to take 45 seconds and look closer.

You have to know when your resume is being thrown away to fix its problems. There is a timing pattern you must understand. You have to break through your resume’s stumbling block in the following pattern to get hired:

Your resume arrives along with 100 others. The secretary trashes 80 after a 10 second review apiece.

The secretary trashes 10 more after giving them 45 seconds apiece.

Her boss gets the 10 remaining resumes and trashes 2 after a 10 second review.

The boss throws away 3 more viable resumes. He just doesn’t have the time to deal with more than 5. For the 3 trashed, something is not quite right.

He calls the 5 remaining candidates, starting with the best one.

Can you see why knowing when your resume is thrown out is critical?

Every time you send out a resume and fail to get an interview you should ask, “Who threw away my resume?” Ask the question of yourself. Also ask your recruiter and the HR person at the company. Beg, if you have to.

You need to find out when and why your resume is not being considered. Also be sensitive to the recruiter and HR. They may lie to you. They don’t want to argue. They want to be powerful and all-knowing. Play on that and ask for advice as you try to find out when your resume was trashed.

Next time we’ll talk about how to get past the screenings and into an interview. For now, try to figure out when your resume is being thrown away.

If you’re afraid to let someone else see your weakness, take heart: Nobody’s perfect. Besides, your attempts to hide your flaws don’t work as well as you think they do. (Morgenstern)

Hiding real problems

The trick to hiding things on your resume is the same one that stars use to hide flaws. For instance, what if you had to be perfectly honest and still answer the question:

“Does this make my butt look big?”

A good honest answer would be, “No. Your butt looks big anyway. Let me find something that makes people look at your smile. It is ravishing. They will never care about what you are sitting on.”

More than one starlet has played an irresistible vixen on TV while 8 months pregnant. How? They focused on everything above and below the swollen pregnant belly, and the actress stayed out of the tabloids until fully recovered. No one ever saw the belly.

If you have problems, even severe problems, you have to make sure the camera focuses somewhere else.

Common problems people want to hide are frequent job changes, being fired, bad references, a several year sabbatical from your field, not accomplishing much, working for a disreputable employer, an ogre boss, etc.

One way to hide problems is to point out what you did well. If you switched jobs too much, create a resume format that draws the reader’s eyes away from your employment dates and to your accomplishments. If you have bad references, you may want to emphasize how long you worked for a company so that those bad references will sound like sour grapes. If you left your desired field for a few years and want to get back, make those few years a one line entry, not a detailed account. You may want to put your jobs in order at the top of your resume, but put the dates at the bottom of the resume in another section on the third page.

If your problem might get your hiring manager in trouble later, make sure he knows about it before you receive an offer. If you are using a recruiter, tell him up front before he submits you anywhere. If you hurt someone who is trying to help you, your bad reputation will be spread very quickly.

Accentuate the positive. Make people’s eyes slide past the negative to get to the ravishing. It’s a game you see every day on TV.

Something To Do Today

Do you have a real problem? Emphasize the positive and make the negative insignificant. Don’t lie. Just put your emphasis on all the good things you have done.

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. (Hoffer)

Hiding what is NOT on your resume may be the hardest part of writing one. Someone is going to get that job. Most successful candidates lack some of the requirements. Some lack major components and still get hired. Let’s look at one of the world’s greatest experts.

Many people say Saddam Hussein was the foremost expert in hiding what is not there. Rather than argue the facts, let’s exploit his methods. It works when you are trying to get a job or promotion to do something you have never done before.

Saddam showed great enthusiasm for the weapons he was not supposed to have. He built expertise in their design, construction and use. He got hold of parts of the technologies required to build the weapons and made sure the world knew it. Tests were done openly with related weapons and delivery systems. His experts visited seminars, arms factories and suppliers of illegal goods. There were even articles published by “insiders” who “blew the cover” of the program. Last of all, he refused to prove he didn’t have the expertise.

Here is how to apply Saddam’s tricks towards getting a job or promotion you have no experience for:

Start doing what you can. Programmers (to be) can create games and databases. Salesmanagers (to be) can lead popcorn sales for the Boy Scouts that gross a quarter million dollars. A computer technician (to be) can put together a network in his basement.

Get a job in or volunteer to work somewhere that is doing what you want to do, even if you are not directly involved.

Talk to people doing what you want to do. Attend their seminars and trade shows. Discuss the latest ideas in the field with people in that field.

Start a blog. Write articles for trade publications–they are always starved for good thoughtful articles. Call reporters with ideas and quotes.

List what you have done in your resume or job review. Do NOTapologize for lack of experience. Emphasize what you have done.

In order to get the first shot at your future, you have to prepare. Eventually your enthusiasm and persistence will get you an opportunity.

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade? (Franklin)

Walking on the flat, open plains, an Apache claims he can disappear from sight. There is no place to hide, so the Army officer backs off to a safe distance and turns his back for a minute. Sure enough the Apache is gone, but there is no place to hide. After the officer searches fruitlessly for awhile, the Apache erupts from the ground.

In the book Life Among The Apaches, John Cremony gives example after example of Apaches hiding where it should be impossible to be out of sight.

Do YOU hide inside your resume?

Another example: Be honest. Do you read every insert in every medicine package you buy? Every word? Why not? You may open it up and take a few seconds to look for something obviously important, then you throw it away. Critical information is on those inserts, but you don‘t read them.

Is your resume as bad as that insert?

You’ve got 2 or 3 sheets of paper for your resume. How much do you hide in plain sight? Are the most important facts about you hidden in long paragraphs? Are they hidden at the END of bullet points?

In school you were required to write in paragraphs. Opening sentence, 3 arguments saving the best for last, and a closing sentence. Guess what? It does NOT work for resumes. No one reads paragraphs in a resume.No one gets to your best argument.

Use bullet points that are effective.

A bullet should be less than one line

Power words at the beginning

Never give the whole story

Make readers want to call you

Your most important word should be in boldin a set of bullets

A resume’s job is to get you an interview. Nothing more. It is not a job interview. It is not a medicine package insert. It is not an essay.

Does your resume get read? Does it get you an interview? If not, change it.

Here is the QUICK FIX

This is an exercise that will help you fix your resume and get job interviews.

Make a copy of your resume

Cut your longest paragraphs down to three lines

Do not split paragraphs, mercilessly shorten them

Make every bullet in your resume less than half a line

Do NOT split paragraphs

After you have done this, look over the two resumes.

Which is most likely to be read?

Now that you have hacked with an axe, go in with an editors pen and make your resume more readable. But don’t make it longer or you’ll be like that Apache again, hiding in plain sight.

Every day, businesses in every industry all around the world fail to make sales to qualified, hungry clients who desperately need what they are selling. And the real problem isn’t what they think it is. They aren’t paying attention to the most critical factor in sales — the critical ingredient that determines what their customers will actually do, and when they will do it.

For the past 30 years our proprietary evaluations and courses have helped salespeople, entrepreneurs, managers, engineers, CPA’s, and programmers harvest sales they previously left languishing until their competitors stole the business.

Living in a ghetto, slum or trailer park does not make you trash. Mother Theresa lived in a slum. Her resume was good enough to get a Nobel Peace Prize.

I get some REALLY bad resumes. They say:

I can’t do this job. I have no skills or training. The reason I have the nerve to apply for it is because I really will work hard. I know I was fired from my last job. It wasn’t my fault. The job really was terrible. The job before that was terrible too. I’m not a freak.

We get at least one of these resumes or cover letters every week. Yes, this bad. Okay, only close to this bad. The resume is trash. It is literally worse than nothing.

Being laid off or fired tends to get workers, salespeople and executives to focus on the negatives from their previous job. They feel they have to explain things in their resumes. That is a mistake. Your resume has only one job, to get you an interview. It is not a confessional. It is not investigative journalism.

Here are 4 signs your resume will be thrown away in record time:

Explain that you are part of a group that would normally not be hired (I want to learn to be a…)

Tell why your boss was an idiot in your last job (I was not allowed to fix…)

List excuses instead of accomplishments (Due to lack of…)

List skills way below those really required for this job (As a carpenter I sawed boards…)

Are you sure you don’t do any of these? Usually these errors are hidden in a cover letter or large paragraph.

Something To Do Today

Seriously look at every line of your resume and cover letter. Every single line. Do you make excuses? Do you subtly or openly put down your previous boss or job? Were you smiling as you wrote it because of the subtle needle in a paragraph? Is a skill you list so basic it shows your lack of higher skills? Do you put yourself in a group of losers accidentally?

Job death is NOT a bad thing. It is a part of your progress. Once you are dead, just get on with your life.

Rigor Mortis – signs of job death – job CPR fixes

When your job is dead you have a decision to make: keep it or leave? If you keep it, perform CPR on your job whenever possible. If you decide to leave, check for rigor mortis before you give up hope.

Signs of job death and rigor mortis:

Dilbert cartoons posted over the company goals

No one notices your 2 hour bathroom breaks…3 times a day

Facebook used more than all other applications combined

No raises in more than 2 years…even for your boss’s mistress

You try to organize a union and there already is one

Surgery required on bitten tongue after your annual review

Quality program of the month comes from a federal agency

A job with the State Department of School Taxes sounds exciting

Members of the beef and whine lunch club get food poisoning

Spouse uses an electric cattle prod to push you out the door in the morning

CPR for your job:

Learn new skills…pay for it yourself

Turn in weekly, monthly and quarterly job reports to your boss and possibly his boss

Go to lunch with enthusiastic people, find out why they are that way, contribute

Get involved with Toastmasters…guaranteed excitement and comedy, some of it on purpose.

Find out everyone’s birthday and decorate their cubicle

Ask the people everyone respects how you can make a bigger difference

Help a customer without permission

There is always something you can do. What is it?

Something To Do Today

Time to write your weekly report in your job journal if you didn’t do it Friday. Make a copy in a format your boss can use to send to his boss. Give it to him even if he protests he doesn’t need it. There is no way he can know all the good things you have done unless you tell him.